


Nightmare

by jeffgangfan



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Tartarus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgangfan/pseuds/jeffgangfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a long time since they both had any nightmares. Percy couldn't say he calmed down quickly. </p><p>Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Rick Riordan does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

Percy snapped open his eyes and the blinding light assaulted his vision. He couldn’t breathe as if there had been an anvil on his chest. Instead, there was a sword sticking out of his abdomen. A wave of panic washed through Percy because he could not remember why he got stabbed and who did that to him.. He clutched at the wound and winced at the sword, which was half way in his body, his mouth tasted blood. The sky was clear and Percy realized he was lying in a pool of his own blood as his fingers now grasped at the grasses around him.

Not so far away, Percy saw that campers were fighting against armies of monsters. They seemed to be outnumbered as the orange and purple spots were fewer than the ugly complexion of monsters. The son of Poseidon couldn’t recall who they were fighting against and since when the war began. He was lying ten foot away from the battle field and didn’t know why, too.

“Percy!” a voice called and Percy’s body jerked because of the worry in the tone. He saw Nico. The son of Hades retracted his sword from the body of a scorpion and ran towards the wounded demigod, his aviator jacket flying behind him. A portal of darkness appeared in front of the running teen. Nico’s new technique of shadow-travelling, and Percy’s stomach turned.

“Don’t!” He heard his own voice sounded with terror and struggled to breathe. Nico disappeared as he stepped into the portal and Percy felt tears slid down his face. His guts told him something different but there was a nagging voice at the back of his head telling him that Nico had to stop shadow-travelling, otherwise, the son of Hades would die.

“Percy, look at me!” Percy!” Nico re-appeared next to him, looming over his paralyzed body. Drops of tears landed on Percy’s face and Nico wiped them away, his thumb as cold as ice.

“Don’t do that ever again!” was choked out and Percy’s grabbed Nico’s hand. “You know you have to stop shadow-travelling!”

“I- ” Nico tried to smile to assure Percy but his face suddenly contorted with pain. He was flickering similarly to the images of a broken TV. Percy clutched at the pale hands, repeating “No.” uselessly over and over again. He knew something bad was happening to Nico but couldn’t address it.  
“Please don’ do this to me, please!” his throat burned as Percy shouted, the blood he had contained in his mouth spilled out from the corner of his lips. Nico looked at him one last time, pitch black eyes saying thousands of words the son of Poseidon couldn’t comprehend because too many things were happening at the same time and Percy just couldn’t-

And Nico vanished.

Percy wailed and he swirled his hand at the black smoke the son of Hades had vanished into. Angry tears flowed freely as he tried to fill in the holes of his memory. Nico shouldn’t have shadow-traveled because he had reached his limits but he did anyway, because of Percy. The green-eyed thumped his fist weakly onto the dark red grass, **cursing** himself because he didn’t remember a single thing until Nico had died. The pain in his abdomen and out of thin air, an arai landed on him.  


Percy shrieked as the winged-creature grinned toothily at him. “Curses?” she asked suggestively. Walls of earth rose around them, rippling as if the grass was growing on the outside of a water balloon. They crashed down on him and the arai, the sword sank in even deeper-

 

Percy snapped open his eyes again and caught a glimpse of the comforting light their lamp provided. He turned to stare at their little Baymax, which was adjusting his light slowly. The robot looked sad although Percy was well aware that the little fellow didn’t have more than a line between his button eyes. Maybe the designer wanted the robot to show the emotions which whoever was looking at it felt. Before he turned to see Nico, his hand fumbled to search for the smaller one. When he felt it, his fingers trailed down to touch the wrist. Percy only released the breath he was holding when he felt his boyfriend’s slow and steady pulse. He watch Nico’s chest rose and fell then left the bed.

He slid down against the bathroom’s tiling, terrified but not alarmed. Percy was not supposed to have nightmares again after Nico had taught him some tricks to avoid the curses of the pit. The Hypnos campers had told them long ago that parts of their souls were stuck in Tartarus. The desperation he had had then was creeping back into his heart, now that Tartarus had managed to see through the tricks.

_What would happen to Nico?_

_Was that nightmare prophetic?_

_Would Nico have nightmares, too?_

_What would happen to them?_

 

When Nico found him, Percy was curling up in fetal position on the cold floor of their bathroom. His breathing was ragged and he had cried so much that the green eyes would be terribly puffy the following day. The Camp beads were lying not so far away, its string broken, indicating that the son of Poseidon had snatched it away from his neck in anger.

“Percy.” Nico called him, voice hoarse from sleep. The Sea demigod nodded weakly to acknowledge Nico’s presence, the red angry mark on his neck confirmed Nico’s assumption.

“Go back to bed. I’ll-I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Percy tried, a flow of tears made its way down his face again. “I’ll be fine.”

It was such a blatant lie that he earned a huff from Nico. The black-eyed stubbornly approached him from his back and flung an arm around Percy to slowly turn Percy’s heavy weight. Pitch black eyes were glued to his with determination and a hint of sorrow as Nico faced him.

Somehow Nico managed to make Percy climb into the bathtub with him. The green eyes were hidden behind his bangs as Percy kept his head low. Nico positioned himself on Percy’s laps and cradled the other’s head. He let Percy sobbed into his shirt as his hand stroke the jet black hair on his boyfriend’s head.

“I’m here, love. I’m here.” Nico whispered as Percy’s arms tightened around him. 

He turned on the shower, cold water poured down on them and Nico rubbed his thumb across the marks Percy had on his face from lying on the floor. The green-eyed embraced his boyfriend again, muttering incoherent apologies. They were soaking wet, pajamas sticking on their body frames.

Nico knew Percy would talk to him tomorrow when he was ready, because it was best to let stress out. Nico was anxious about the future, too. But his concentration was now all on Percy, who was shaking in the water that was supposed to calm him down in minutes.

Bad nights were to come and Nico hoped that they would pull through again, like they always did.

**Author's Note:**

> It took him days to get over it.


End file.
